Jon Corzine's Spectacular Fall With MF Global

By The Atlantic Wire

In a series of new reports on MF Global's shocking bankruptcy, the firm is placing the blame squarely on CEO Jon Corzine, a superstar of the I-95 corridor who was not only chief executive of Goldman Sachs but also a senator and governor for New Jersey.

REUTERS

Former associates say the former CEO of Goldman Sachs
and New Jersey Governor personally made individual trades at the company
and called for risky investments outside of the oft-mentioned European
bonds. He is not without his apologists but the takeaway from his
colleagues is a hard-driving manager who drove traders to take
incredible risks.

Much of the focus on Corzine's actions have been on his risky bets on European debt. However, an MF Global trader speaking to The New York Times, says
Corzine pushed trader's to take chances on all sorts of trades. "He was
instrumental in pushing our firm forward with risk taking in every
book, whether it was U.S. government bonds, currencies, or in repos,"
said the trader. "Everything was full throttle go." As soon as he
arrived at the firm, the Times notes that he had an "insistence on taking more risks, including buying the debt of European countries like Italy and Spain."

In The Washington Post,
associates tell the paper he "was known to make trades himself at the
firm" and that "they personally warned him about the dangers of
acquiring European debt, but that he shrugged them off." The paper adds:
"That extreme self-confidence was well known among his peers."
Explaining his personal betting splurge, The Wall Street Journal
reports that "In late 2010, Mr. Corzine started making big bets on
bonds issued by European countries. He sometimes placed orders himself
based on a list of prices left with an assistant, according to people
familiar with the situation. Mr. Corzine, who made his name and fortune
as a Treasury bond trader at Goldman, was convinced that sovereign debt
from countries like Italy and Spain with high yields was a steal, these
people said." In The Star-Ledger, a source close to Corzine pinned the blamed squarely on him. "If you bet the ranch, sometimes you can lose the ranch."